To play devil's advocate, I can see the version numbering scheme contributing more attention to the lack of updates from OEMs from the average user. Although I have no empirical data to support it, I can imagine there's a lot of people that don't see new Android versions as "updates", but rather "editions" due to the dessert naming scheme. It's not immediately obvious to some of the people I know that their Galaxy phone, as an example, doesn't have the latest version of Android. Not too long ago, I've literally heard a friend say they have the "Lollipop edition of Android" and they were completely unaware they were two versions behind. They thought Pie and Oreo were simply alternative editions, depending on manufacturer.

I think the numbering scheme will be more obvious to the average user that they are behind from latest version of Android and that might add more pressure to OEMs (and carriers) to put more effort into updates.